Hello and welcome to my personal assessment of my favorite eleven games at E3 2011. This isn’t an official Digital Chumps “Best of” list and it doesn’t speak for the rest of the staff that attended E3. It is also not all-inclusive, as I certainly did not get to play or see everything on the show floor (for example, had I been given a proper demo of From Dust, you can bet it would have been here). Other than that these are the games that, judging from their usually brief demo, showed the most promise to either change the gaming landscape or massage my personal interest in interactive entertainment – which, I’d like to think, is the same thing.
Honorable Mention
PixelJunk Lifelike
Not sure if this is able to be interpreted or engaged by the average human being, but man did it look cool seeing Baiyon jam out to Lifelike. Read my impressions
PixelJunk SideScroller (PSN) Developer: Q-Games
Q-Games collective output is responsible for some of the best and most genretically* diverse titles, downloadable or otherwise, of the current generation. PixelJunk Eden, PixelJunk Monsters, and even X-Scape have been among my favorite titles of the last few years. SideScroller looks to continue that tradition for the legendarily difficult genre of horizontal, sidescrolling shooters. For a guy who grew up on Lifeforce, Gradius, and (ugh) MagMax – that’s music to my ears. While I never constructed formal impressions, the two levels I played of SideScroller were hard as shit on normal difficulty (as they should be) while maintaining their own take on a genre that was seemingly exploited years ago. A deliberately retro aesthetic helps, but competent mechanics ensure SideScroller is going to play for keeps. View footage Steve apparently shot at the Sony party.
Bastion (XBLA) Developer: Supergiant Games
Is it the surreal look? The allure of an isometric action RPG? Maybe a penchant for independent games? Bastion boasts about a dozen gateways, but none with a signature as bold as its constant narration. It’s odd how the team at Supergiant Games took an idea so simple, so obvious and, in many ways, so unlikely to actually work in the context of the fiction and cranked out one of the most endearing hooks of any game on the show floor. I was sold on the premise, but thankfully Bastion’s actually fun to play too. View part 1 of our demo and conversation with Supergiant’s Greg Kasavin // View part 2
Sonic Generations (360, PS3, Wii U?) Developer: Sonic Team
Cue the Sonic Cycle picture and ridiculous gifs. Reference Sonic 2006, bitch about Sonic 4’s physics. Did we get that out of the way? Great. I had a pretty damn good time with Sonic Generations. The 3D portion was a better looking version of Colors and the 2D stuff was actually really good. The current interpretation of Sonic Team will never be able to replicate Yuji Naka and STI’s earlier work twenty years ago but, with proper direction and the right balance of homage and innovation, they might knock this one out of the park. View Steve’s HD footage
Papo & Yo (PSN) Developer: Minority
On the surface, Papo & Yo resembles like a highly stylized and somewhat clever puzzle game. From afar it looks like a kid, a robot, and a giant pink monster with a bipolor disorder. Playing it yielded a similar result; fun and engaging if not slightly overzealous. Spoiling its metaphor via a conversation with the developers at Minority generated a much more appropriate sense of appreciation. Inspiration comes from a variety of places (and is usually diluted with focus groups), but when an auteur chooses to express depressing and inane aspects of his past by rendering a bold, beautiful world inhabited by a small boy and a monster he so blindly adores, well, that’s something else entirely. Minority might not nail their ambition, but Papo & Yo could be very special if they hit their marks. Read my impressions
Ms. ‘Splosion Man (XBLA) Developer: Twisted Pixel
Playing Ms. ‘Splosion Man made me remember how much damn fun I had playing ‘Splosion Man. ‘Sploding , even if it was just a stupid term for a triple jump, is an implausibly fun mechanic, and using it to wreck shop on a bunch of scientists never got old. Ms. ‘Splosion appears to offer more of the same, but under slightly different circumstances. The only level I played was simply a much more aesthetically pleasing (and diverse) interpretation of the original, but other extras, such as the fantastic Two Girls One Controller mode, offer a better take on interactive weirdness. Plus, as with almost all Twisted Pixel creations, you know we’re going to be in for the best messed up videos this side of Mega 64.
Prey 2 (360, PS3, PC) Developer: Human Head Studios
I heard the original Prey was hilarious garbage, somewhat of the current gen equivalent of Turok, so I didn’t really have high expectations for the sequel. I sat down for a hands-off real time demo of Prey 2 and quietly disposed of my expectations in the nearest waste basket. I have no idea how in the hell they’re going to explain why you’re a Federal Air Marshall one minute and an interplanetary bounty hunter the next, but tracking down bad guys on a Bladerunner-esque world, and looking incredibly cool in the process, sounds like a perfect big budget action game. The Prey 2 demo really nailed the feeling of control and that your actions would actually impact the world, as every NPC and/or mark for bounty had a story to tell. Prey 2 is one to look out for, and from a most unexpected place. Read my impressions
Mass Effect 3 (360, PS3, PC) Developer: Bioware
Mass Effect 2 was my favorite game of 2010 and one of the two games which I have awarded a perfect score. When we got the E3 show floor on day one, Mass Effect 3 was the game Chris and I made a nearly uncompromised mission to see. Bioware’s three-part Mass Effect 3 demo didn’t blow our socks off with its majestic roar, but it still made a pretty damn good impression. Combat, at least soldier class, has seen obvious refinement and the sheer scale of the Reaper invasion on Earth was incredibly impressive, but the beauty was in what’s at stake. Terrible things are going to happen to Shepard’s world, and while Bioware may have given too much away with the obvious cue to get every alien race to work together and help Earth, plenty of room is left to tell a tale of resonance. Hell, that shot of the Normandy exiting the atmosphere as hundreds of Reaper ships fell into the atmosphere may have been my favorite moment of the show. Read my impressions
SoundShapes (Vita) Developer: Queasy Games
After 2007’s Everyday Shooter I became a fan of Queasy Games for life. A twin stick shooter, Everyday Shooter had competent mechanics and divergent, interesting rule sets for every level, but most importantly it had a fantastic soundtrack that fundamentally altered ones perception of the game. Sound Shapes looks to cover similar ground for the Vita. Its look was infectious and, even though I didn’t know what exactly was going on, I knew I wanted to play it. Actually even after I had a closer look at Sound Shapes I’m still not 100 percent sure what it’s all about. In any case it was one of the only Vita demos that didn’t seem focused on overly exploiting the Vita’s new features. And the music, oh god the music is so good. If Sound Shapes is a launch game then it’s my personal killer-app. View Steve’s HD footage with direct-feed audio // View Steve’s HD footage of the level builder with direct-feed audio
Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception (PS3) Developer: Naughty Dog
Drake’s Deception is one that gets by on pedigree more than what’s actually on display. Still, the ship demo at the press conference and the cargo plane insanity on displayed behind closed doors is reason enough to pledge allegiance Nathan Drake’s latest adventure. Naughty Dog hasn’t cranked out anything less than a five star title since 3DO, and, coming off their most successful and critically acclaimed game of all time, Uncharted 3 is poised to follow history; Jak 3 and Crash Bandicoot: Warped were the most ambitious, polished, and all around interesting iterations of their respective series. The only thing we have to worry about is if we’re going to get the usual cart-racer follow-up in two years. Read my impressions
BioShock Infinite (360, PS3, PC) Developer: Irrational Games
This point was sort of covered in my impressions, but view few games sport a world actually worthy of exploration. Open world games kind of do this by enticing the player to look for collectables, easter eggs, or various tests of the game’s physics engine, but a precious sample of games encourage exploration for the sole purpose of absorbing the narrative fiction. Colombia is a living, breathing place and I wanted to soak up every single detail. The demo stayed on rails, part of the pains of controlling a message, but I know that when I play BioShock Infinite I will ravenously consume the fiction it has to offer. I’ll want every single detail, and that’s an experience afforded by only the best of the best. Read my impressions
Journey (PSN) Developer: Thatgamecompany
Journey deals exclusively in the unknown. Parts of it are a cooperative game built on the shared experience of exploration, but you’ll never know who you’re playing with. Going solo has an identifiable goal somewhere in contained levels, but it’s never explicitly stated. Journey appears to be a highly experimental game focused on discovery in a strange world, not unlike Wanderer in Shadow of the Colossus, or, I guess more appropriately, Paul Atreides in Dune. What lies ahead is as interesting as it is confidently undefined, which is more than I can say for any other game on the show floor. I can’t think of a game I want to play and devour more than Journey.
Coverage on Journey was sort of a team effort. Chris played it and wrote about it while Steve filmed Chris, and I had an impromptu interview (more of a conversation, really) with Thatgamecompany’s Kellee Santiago. Video/conversation: Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3
*this word does not exist
